One evening in the fall of 2015, Scott O’Neil, the cocksure CEO of the 76ers, walked into an upscale San Francisco seafood restaurant overlooking the bay. His dark hair was slicked back, as always, and he carried with him pitch material: customized Sixers jerseys with the StubHub logo stitched to the top and pictures illustrating how the logo would pop on TV.
For years, O’Neil had pushed the NBA to relax its restriction on jersey sponsorships. He believed it to be an untapped revenue source. The NBA, like many major men’s American professional sports leagues, had long rejected such proposals, out of fear of offending traditionalists, but O’Neil knew that would soon change and desperately wanted to be first. He called his friend Scott Cutler, the recently hired president of StubHub. Cutler was intrigued. Soon after, O’Neil, Chris Heck, his longtime friend and the Sixers’ chief revenue officer, and Jake Reynolds, his brother-in-law and the Sixers’ vice president of sales and service, were boarding a flight to San Francisco.
At dinner that night, O’Neil pitched Cutler on his vision. He illustrated how he had taken over the Sixers a few years earlier and “how the Sixers had to take things down to the studs to rebuild it back up,” Cutler recalled. O’Neil explained how the Sixers were accumulating draft picks and building around promising young players. He described how they were selling this strategy to their fan base. Any concerns Cutler might have had about attaching his company to a team that had become synonymous with losing were quickly dispelled. Changes governing the rules on jersey sponsorships, O’Neil pointed out, wouldn’t be instituted until the 2017–2018 season.
“By that time,” he told Cutler, “we think we’re going to have one of the most exciting teams in the league.”
The pitch and its timeline was never run by Hinkie. He might not have known it, but his time with the Sixers was coming to an end.
* * *
The relationship between O’Neil and Hinkie was tenuous from the start. Hinkie preferred to keep his inner circle tight. O’Neil, meanwhile, held aspirations of being more than just a marketing guru. “He wanted to be the guy that could run both basketball and the business side,” said a well-connected NBA insider. In his previous job, as president of Madison Square Garden Sports, he helped draw up the Knicks’ 2010 free agency pitches to LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh (which were unsuccessful), and a year later pushed MSG chairman James Dolan to trade for Carmelo Anthony. He was comfortable enough around the basketball side that he could often be found on the practice court in shorts and a T-shirt, “kicking the shit, fouling and knocking the hell out of some of our players,” said Donnie Walsh, the Knicks’ president of basketball operations from 2008 to 2011.
O’Neil broke into the business the early 1990s, as a marketing assistant for the New Jersey Nets. He was around twenty-four at the time and a few months into the job when Jon Spoelstra, the Nets’ president,1 spotted him trying to repair a paper jam in a Xerox machine.
“Why are you fixing that?” Spoelstra asked.
“Because it’s broken,” O’Neil responded.
Spoelstra called O’Neil into his office. O’Neil thought he was getting fired.
“You ever sell sponsorships?” Spoelstra asked. The Nets were a dull team playing in an insipid arena planted on top of a Jersey swamp. “The sponsorship staff was beaten down from all that failure,” Spoelstra recalled. He had noticed O’Neil, who’d recently graduated from Villanova University with a marketing degree, around the office.
“I needed someone who had some chutzpah,” Spoelstra said.
He promoted O’Neil, giving him an office and additional responsibility, but O’Neil craved more. “I wanted to be the boss since I was three years old,” he once told The Villanovan. He took a job with the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles in 1994, then received an MBA from Harvard Business School, then returned to the Eagles, then linked up with a nascent apparel company called AND1 before joining the NBA and climbing to senior vice president of marketing and business operations. He developed a reputation for being “intelligent, intense, and curious,” said Peter Feigin, the president of the Milwaukee Bucks and former vice president of marketing and business development for MSG Sports. “He has the ability to be abrasive at times, but he’s all about growth. When Scott has a project he puts his own time and demands results on it, which are above and beyond what a normal person would do, and his expectation is things will be done extremely well and focused. He keeps that intensity and expects it from everyone around him.”
MSG hired O’Neil in 2008 to help the company rehabilitate in the wake of a $11.5 million sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit brought against them and former GM and coach Isiah Thomas. O’Neil secured million-dollar deals with marquee brands like JPMorgan Chase, Delta Airlines, and Coca-Cola before clashing with the temperamental Dolan and leaving in 2012. A year later the Sixers hired him to replace co-owner Adam Aron as CEO.
“One of Scott’s mantras back then was, ‘Make sure you’re ready for when you do have that 50-win team,’” said Fred Whitfield, a longtime friend of O’Neil’s and the chief operating officer, team president, and a minority owner of the Charlotte Hornets. “When you’re running business operations in the NBA, you don’t really have control over what happens on the court, but your goal should be to get your stuff in a position so that when you do have a 50-win team, you’re able to maximize every opportunity that comes with it.”
O’Neil froze ticket prices. He bolstered the sales staff, making it one of the largest, and youngest, in the NBA. “He invested in a ton of human capital to get through the tough times,” Feigin said. The group adored O’Neil, who emphasized culture, community service, and work-life balance. His staff was tireless, energetic, and creative. Sales of season ticket packages were celebrated in the office with a ringing of a bell and a quick dance party. The sales staff would vote on all sorts of awards, and then pass around totems like a Brett Brown–signed hard hat and championship belt.
Recognizing the difficulty of marketing a last-place team, the group got creative. Season ticket holders were invited to meet-and-greets, with both players and Brown. On-court experiences, like high-fiving players as they came out of the tunnel, were dangled. The tactics helped the Sixers increase their season ticket sales from around 4,600 during the 2013–2014 season to 7,100 in 2015–2016, with a 90 percent renewal rate. O’Neil put himself on the front lines of the battle. Whitfield recalled coming to Philadelphia for games and accompanying O’Neil on visits to some Wells Fargo Center suites. “The fans there weren’t very pleasant,” Whitfield said. “They were really saying nasty things about what was going on and how painful it was to continue spending well-earned dollars on a losing product.” O’Neil would channel Hinkie. “Be patient with this,” he’d say. “We do have a plan in place and we’re going to turn the corner.” But behind the scenes his patience was wearing thin.
Forbes had ranked the Sixers one of the least valuable teams in the NBA. They averaged a measly 13,940 fans per game in 2014–2015, the league’s lowest mark, and just 14,881 the following season, the NBA’s third-worst figure. And the TV ratings were even worse: an average of 23,000 viewers per game during 2014–2015, a number more suited for a late-night infomercial than an NBA game. O’Neil’s job was getting more difficult and he was growing frustrated by Hinkie’s insistence on keeping him at arm’s length.
In February 2015, O’Neil was ready to launch a new marketing campaign. The tagline This Starts Now would replace the current slogan of Together We Build. The words would be splayed across a photograph of three of the team’s lottery picks: Nerlens Noel, Joel Embiid, and Michael Carter-Williams. The campaign was introduced on the afternoon of February 17. Two days later, Hinkie traded Carter-Williams to the Milwaukee Bucks for a future first-round pick. O’Neil was embarrassed. Furious too. Whatever semblance of a relationship that had once existed between him and Hinkie was now broken. O’Neil began voicing his displeasure—to Harris, but also to the NBA. He’d known Adam Silver for years, both from his time in the league office and as part of a small group of team executives (called the Team Advisory Committee) who reported to the NBA’s Board of Governors. He also left Hinkie out of his pitches to potential business partners, never even mentioning his name.
“Sam did it to himself,” O’Neil said. “Someone had to take the hit.”2
* * *
On December 7, 2015, the press was told to show up early for that night’s game against the Spurs. No other information was shared. They congregated in an interview room at the Wells Fargo Center and noticed three microphones set up. One was assumed to be for Sam Hinkie, another for Josh Harris. The group began guessing who the third person could be. Some assumed it was Brett Brown. Others thought that perhaps Jahlil Okafor, who’d been at the center of a number of recent off-court incidents, would be speaking.
At around 5:30, Harris and Hinkie walked in. They were flanked by an older man. He was tall. He wore a big championship ring on his right hand and had a face that exuded old-school authority. Some in the room recognized him from the decades he’d spent in and around the NBA.
“We are pleased to announce Jerry Colangelo as chairman of basketball operations and special adviser to the 76ers,” Harris said, reading a prepared statement in his typical drawl. Hinkie and Colangelo sat on either side of him.
“This season, to date, has not been easy for us and even more difficult than we anticipated,” Harris added. “Our situation necessitated a review to make our organization better.”
Harris had been drowning under the complaints for months, from O’Neil, who wanted a more linear path, and from others throughout the league as well, and he began pushing Hinkie for markers of progress. Hinkie and his staff, feeling the walls closing in, tried devising more effective ways to present the steps they believed they had taken. They had two young lottery centers on the court (Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor) and tons of draft picks and Dario Šarić was a year closer to joining the team and Joel Embiid’s health was improving and thanks to all the losses another lottery pick was on the way. It would soon all be visible and evident. They just needed to remain patient.
But the Okafor saga—the drunken videos, the reports of reckless and dangerous behavior, most of all the ensuing bad press—had moved Harris out of Hinkie’s corner. It didn’t matter that Hinkie was running a private-equity-like playbook—take over a distressed asset; tear everything down—or that he was doing exactly what he’d told Harris he would. Harris wasn’t used to his business being in the papers every day. “We own this chemical company that was $50 billion, but nobody cares about the price of propylene,” he once said. “But the Sixers starting lineup, everyone has an opinion.” He didn’t like the constant criticism, or the way the narrative had seemed to permanently turn. Less than three years earlier Sixers fans had showered him with cheers at the press conference introducing Andrew Bynum. He missed that feeling.
He’d asked Hinkie to address some of the public concerns. Hinkie never did. Harris knew that Silver, who had expressed his displeasure with tanking both privately and publicly, was eager for the Sixers to make a change. He asked for help.
Silver was delighted. He suggested a few names. One was Rod Thorn, a septuagenarian NBA lifer who served as Sixers president under Harris from 2011 to 2013 before leaving to become the NBA’s president of basketball operations. Another was Colangelo.
Colangelo, seventy-six at the time, was as revered and respected as anyone around the NBA. He’d climbed from the working-class Hungry Hill neighborhood of Chicago Heights—where he grew up in a house built by his Italian immigrant grandfather two doors down from a saloon—to Phoenix Suns general manager, a position he earned at the age of twenty-eight. He held that job until 1987 when, as part of a group of investors, he purchased the team for $44.5 million. He was the kind of executive who, in the 1990s, told assistant coaches that “my word” was as binding as an actual contract and would fly his players, coaches, and every member of their families to Hawaii for postseason vacations. He was a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, a four-time NBA Executive of the Year, a Phoenix luminary with hands in nearly every one of the city’s professional sports teams—“Jerry is the primary arbiter of what goes on downtown,” former Phoenix mayor Terry Goddard once said—who had since taken over and revitalized the USA Basketball program. He had relationships in every corner of the league office and all across the NBA, from agents to team executives to the media, and enjoyed nurturing them. From this standpoint, he was the antithesis of Hinkie.
At home in Phoenix in late fall, Colangelo received a call from Silver. He wanted to know if Colangelo would be open to speaking with Harris. Colangelo didn’t know him, but he loved team building, relished challenges, and, as others around the NBA have put it, was never one to turn down an opportunity to be labeled a savior. Colangelo told Silver to pass along his number. Around the beginning of December he and Harris spoke over the phone.
“Josh shared with me what the circumstances were,” Colangelo said. “He asked if I would be willing to serve in an advisory capacity to help them through their difficult circumstances at the time.”
Harris had always been susceptible to persuasion as an NBA owner. Former Sixers head coach Doug Collins, a sort of larger-than-life NBA legend and for someone new to the world of professional sports a cool dude to know, was the first to have Harris’s ear. Then came Hinkie, whose fluency in finance appealed to Harris’s private equity background. Now it was Colangelo’s turn.
“This is not a deviation from our plan,” Harris said during that introductory press conference. Later he added, “To be completely clear, I continue to have the utmost confidence in Sam.” Hinkie put on a good face. “This is a really good day for the Sixers,” he said. He added that he was eager to lean on Colangelo as a resource.
That night, Spike Eskin and Mike Levin recorded a Rights to Ricky Sanchez show to react to the Colangelo news.
“Welcome to an emergency episode of The Rights to Ricky Sanchez,” Eskin announced to start the show. “The Process has, uh…” He trailed off.
“I’m interested to see how you finish this sentence,” Levin said.
“I don’t know,” Eskin responded.
* * *
Colangelo and Harris agreed to a three-year deal. The plan, Colangelo said, was to “get acquainted with all the people, all the basketball people, and come to some judgments myself.” Most of his work would be conducted long-distance from his home in Phoenix, but he did pay a number of visits to the offices, especially early on.
One of Colangelo’s first calls after taking the job was to Mike D’Antoni, the sixty-four-year-old former Coach of the Year who, while with Colangelo’s Suns, had pioneered the frenetic and explosive “seven seconds or less” offense.3 D’Antoni’s two most recent stints—with the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks—had ended poorly and he was looking to get back into the game. Many around the league believed Colangelo was bringing in Brown’s eventual replacement.
D’Antoni was hired as an associate head coach. He tweaked some of Brown’s actions and added some new sets. “It was a little awkward at first,” Sixers guard Nik Stauskas said. “None of the players wanted Brett to be fired, but we knew D’Antoni had been a head coach and we weren’t really sure what it meant.” D’Antoni’s easygoing disposition and self-deprecating sense of humor helped break the tension. When he joined the Sixers, they were 1–27. Four games later they upset the Suns in Phoenix.
“Man, I’m good,” D’Antoni told Sixers players in the locker room afterward. “I come in and you guys start winning right away.”
Colangelo wasn’t done tinkering. He met often with Hinkie. He told him he had no qualms with the decision to tear down the team, but he did push for changes along the margins. He believed Hinkie needed to do a better job of selling his plan in the media. “[We] talked about how it would help if I would be more open—if we did a better job of bringing fans along with us,” Hinkie said. Colangelo was also adamant about bringing in a few veterans to help guide the younger players. “There seems to be a void of leadership, player-wise,” Colangelo said during his introductory press conference.
The day before Christmas, a little over two weeks after Colangelo had come on board, the Sixers traded two future second-round picks for Ish Smith, a twenty-seven-year-old point guard. Smith was a slight but speedy journeyman who was averaging a solid but unspectacular 8.9 points and 5.7 assists per game. He’d played 25 games for the Sixers the previous season. The coaches loved him, and were ecstatic about his return.
“We just needed anyone who could consistently dribble, get the ball to an open man, so the coaches didn’t have to generate every single basket,” Lance Pearson, then the coordinator of coaching analytics and special video projects, said. “He also knew what it means to grind and stay on a roster. We felt there were a lot of lessons he could share.”
Hinkie didn’t disagree. Before the season he’d tried signing Kendall Marshall, a former lottery pick rehabbing from a torn ACL, for that very reason. “We had strong desires for a point guard who could help us play at a high tempo, and get our best players the ball in positions where they could be successful,” Hinkie said. “Someone to throw a post entry pass. We thought Kendall was that guy.” But Marshall’s recovery took longer than the Sixers anticipated. He didn’t return to the court until early December. By that time, the wheels on the Sixers’ season had already come off.
Still, signing a player like Marshall wasn’t the same as trading for one like Smith. Hinkie had spent his entire reign collecting second picks. To him, they were precious assets, not bait to be dangled as a means for acquiring a backup point guard.
Colangelo also called David Falk, a prominent agent and one of Hinkie’s most ardent critics, about adding Elton Brand, a former No. 1 pick, to the player development staff. Brand, thirty-six, had played sixteen NBA seasons, including four with the Sixers (2008–2012). He was a former Rookie of the Year and a two-time All-Star. He was intelligent and well liked, so much so that the Hawks, his previous team, had offered him a front office gig. But he was still trying to figure out how to spend the next phase of his career. Falk notified Brand of the Sixers’ interest. Brand spoke to Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who’d coached Okafor and worked with Colangelo on Team USA, and met Hinkie for breakfast.
Hinkie explained to Brand what he was looking for, and how the Sixers thought he could help. He told him he’d get a company credit card to take teammates out to meals. Brand wasn’t sold. He didn’t need the money. He’d earned nearly $170 million over his career. Also, the Sixers were bad. Really bad. “Players didn’t want to come work out for the team, they couldn’t get any veterans. It was a low point,” he recalled. Was this really a situation he wanted to join? “I’m going on a vacation,” he told Hinkie. He said he’d think it over and be back in around three weeks. “If you still want me, let me know.” The Sixers did, but for a different role. “Sam came back and said that the Sixers actually wanted me to be on the team,” Brand said. “He told me I wouldn’t even have to play.” After some introspection, Brand signed on.
Initially, Hinkie went along with it all. Then, not long after his hiring, Colangelo came to him with another proposal, only this one was more of a demand, and the type not typically made of NBA GMs. “We really thought the front office could be restructured,” Colangelo said. “Sam would remain in power, but someone else would be brought in to sit alongside him and you would have a couple people rather than one running the show.”
Colangelo and ownership whittled a list of candidates down to two names. One was Danny Ferry, a former Duke star and NBA champion who’d previously served as the general manager for the Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers. Harris had pursued Ferry in June 2012, for the role Hinkie now occupied, but Ferry had instead taken the job with the Hawks.
The other was Jerry’s son, Bryan, leading many to believe that this had been Jerry’s plan all along.
“They were the top two candidates in everyone’s estimation,” he said, pushing back against the charge of nepotism. “I did not even participate in those interviews, I thought it was inappropriate for me.” Bryan had served as Suns general manager under Jerry and then later moved on to the Toronto Raptors. He was named Executive of the Year in 2007 but had also been replaced in 2013.
Ferry, whom Harris had tried to hire in 2012, was the first choice. The offer intrigued him. He’d left the Hawks a year earlier—it was reported that he’d read an “offensive and racist comment” from a scouting report about an African player out loud during a conference call—and was looking to get back in the game. He’d worked alongside Brett Brown in San Antonio and considered him a close friend. Brown, in fact, was one of the people selling Ferry to ownership. “Brett really wanted the Sam thing to work as well,” said a friend. “He really liked Sam and respected him and knew he had great value, but also knew he was in trouble. He was trying to piece something together.” Ferry told Brown he was interested but only if Hinkie was on board. Hinkie wasn’t thrilled, but recognized the situation. He liked Ferry as a person, respected him as a basketball mind, and figured if he had to partner with someone, Ferry would be a good choice.
Harris called Ferry soon after.
“We’re trying to bring in someone with a different perspective and different feel to work with Sam,” he told him. He stressed that the two would work as partners. Ferry and Hinkie discussed what the partnership would look like. Who would communicate with ownership? Who’d be the lead voice with players? How would responsibilities be divided? Who’d get final say on trades and draft picks? If the two disagreed, how would that be presented to ownership? Sometimes Hinkie would pull out an org chart. The process dragged on. What was supposed to take a few weeks lasted a couple of months. “They were comfortable with each other, but Sam couldn’t get comfortable with how it would all work,” said a longtime NBA executive—understandably, given that no other team operated with two men sharing the controls.
Ownership was losing patience. Bryan had been contending for the Brooklyn Nets’ GM vacancy before being passed over at the last minute. He was now available and interested in the job. Jerry started lobbying ownership on his behalf.
Around the end of March, Bryan and the Sixers entered negotiations. On April 5, Hinkie went on ESPN writer Zach Lowe’s podcast. He talked about how helpful Jerry Colangelo had been. He shared his thoughts on Joel Embiid. He explained why he didn’t expect tanking to spread across the NBA. He expressed optimism about the Sixers’ chances in the upcoming draft lottery.
“We have the highest ever chance at the No. 1 pick because of some of our moves. I think we are like 53 percent for one of the top two picks and a coin flip from having two top-five picks,” Hinkie told Lowe. “It is funny how some 76ers fans are turning it into March Madness.”
The following afternoon, Hinkie sent a thirteen-page letter to Harris, Colangelo, and the rest of the Sixers’ ownership group.
“To the equity partners of Philadelphia 76ers, L.P.,” it began. “I hope this letter finds you well. I have been serving the Sixers at your pleasure for the past 34 months. Atul Gawande, a Surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, remains (from afar) one of my favorite reads. He laughs that reading scientific studies has long been a guilty pleasure. Reading investor letters has long been one of mine.” Five paragraphs later—which included a Warren Buffett anecdote, a quote misattributed to Abraham Lincoln (“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”), a subtle jab at Scott O’Neil (“I can assure you that when your team is eventually able to compete deep into May, Scott will ably and efficiently separate the good people of the Delaware Valley from their wallets on your behalf. Worry not.”)—Hinkie reached his point.
“Given all the changes to our organization, I no longer have the confidence that I can make good decisions on behalf of investors in the Sixers—you,” he wrote. “So I should step down. And I have.”
About two hours later, the letter—deemed a “manifesto” by the media—was leaked to ESPN. Rumors circulated that Jerry Colangelo was the one to do so. He denied the accusation.
“Ultimately, Sam made the decision, he didn’t want to be part of our new structure, and so he resigned,” Jerry said. “That’s what transpired, he was not pushed out. Every intention was to keep him because he really was valuable in the sense of his expertise. There was a lot of misinformation, in my mind, that was out there. About who did what and who said what.”
Sixers players began sharing the news with each other in a group chat. “It was sad how it happened,” said Robert Covington, who was drafted by Hinkie. Some players scanned the letter. The Philadelphia Daily News ran a headline the next morning: “SCRAM HINKIE: Sixers GM abandons ship.” Hinkie showed up at PCOM for that day’s practice to say some goodbyes. Afterward the team set up rows of chairs across the gym floor. Harris and Brown addressed players and staff.
“I wanted Sam to be here to see this whole thing through,” Brown told them.
A little over a month later, the Sixers announced a deal with StubHub, placing the company’s logo on the team’s jerseys. O’Neil celebrated the announcement on Twitter with the hashtag #process2progress.
1 And, yes, father of the future Miami Heat head coach.
2 O’Neil never did agree to an interview for this book. I did, however, introduce myself to him in October 2018 outside the visitors’ locker room in Detroit. I told him I was writing a book on The Process and that I found it funny he had sort of become the bogeyman to Hinkie loyalists. His response was the quote above. The words “off the record” were never muttered and I had clearly identified myself as a reporter.
3 The strategy behind it was exactly as it sounds—that the best looks on offense typically came within the first seven seconds of a possession.